"Mine" will always be relevant. I'm not modest, but I'm right! "Mina" is the story of growing up, but it's not only that... The book overflows with three full-fledged worlds, and as I like to say to my fans in Bulgaria: "In "Mina", everything means something else!" And that's the truth. The layers are many and different, and sometimes the fans themselves surprise me with readings that I didn't even think about. "Mina" is a sincere and warm book. I mean the entire trilogy of course… There is so much love in it that it just makes my heart stop when I think about some of the events. Also, Mina is a book about books. This is a book about a girl who catches "unborn words" out of thin air. And that means it is a story about storytellers, who are an extremely important phenomenon for the world and our lives.

Many Bulgarian authors would love to be in your place and to be translated and published in the West. What's the way? What are the biggest challenges?

Given that this is the first children's book to be published in the English-speaking West, from the end of Socialism until now, you might be right... Several of the contemporary Bulgarian children's authors have books abroad, but for the English-speaking market, mine is really the first since the fall on the wall. It is a book published by a western English-language publisher, it's not self-published.

The way is to be seen by the publishers there themselves. To see us for real. In some mysterious way to introduce ourselves to them. If we somehow manage to reach them, talk to them and show them not only how we write, but also how we think, what our worldview is, what kind of people we are, I'm just absolutely sure that they won't betray us. I mean our best Bulgarian children's authors, of course...

 

You can read the entire interview in Bulgarian at: Knijni Krile